Legacy of the Wulfen - David Annandale & Robbie MacNiven

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Brethren, split and cleanse.’ Stern ordered. He went right with Caldor, Alacar and Latimer, while Tomaz, Wilfred, Artemis, Ethold and Osbeth went left.

  The flamers of Tzeentch met them. From their many sightless heads, from gaping maws and from the flaring ends of quad-jointed limbs, multi-hued warpfire spewed to engulf the charging Knights. The flames themselves screamed as they flowed around the silver paladins, grasping and snapping at them like the sinuous appendages of a living creature. Such an inferno would have reduced unwarded mortals to gibbering hunks of twisting, mutating flesh and blasted bare the sanity of the most devout Imperial servant. Stern felt the warding aegis engraved into his armour vibrate as it turned the daemonic energies aside. He spat one of the Prayers of Contrition as he thrust through the warpfire, nemesis sword a scything white arc.

  The first flamer came apart beneath the holy steel, its own fires turning in on it and eating it up. Stern’s brethren were beside him, their anointed weapons crackling with power as they cut apart the ever-changing monsters. They closed around him, united in a recital of the Canticle of Absolution. Stern threw a glance at the centre of the chamber.

  The Wolves’ advance had stalled.

  Ragnar cursed when he saw the Grey Knights materialise amidst a flare of teleportation lightning. He’d known the inquisitor would go behind their backs at some point. There would be a reckoning with him when this was all over.

  If any of them made it off the command deck alive. The sky-screamer came at him from above, filling the energy-charged air with the shriek of its passing chitin spines. Ragnar met it with an upswing of Frostfang, the chainsword’s scream matching that of the airborne daemon as it sawed the thing in two, spraying the Blackpelts with stinking purple viscera. More of the creatures dived down at them, their manta-like bodies rippling on the invisible currents of the warp.

  The Space Wolves’ attack was blunted. Horrors pressed in from all sides, splitting and multiplying, bathed in hellish wyrdlight that threw crazed shadows across the embattled chamber. The sleek sky daemons above them struck in shoals, swooping at an angle so that their frills of spines and drooling maws skimmed the top of the melee. The Wulfen paid for their feral desire to remove their helms, their unprotected faces gouged and torn by the passing screamers.

  ‘Stay tight!’ Ragnar bellowed at the nearest Wolves, slashing through another blue horror that leapt at him, all flailing arms and yawning mouths. ‘Aim for the platform!’

  Behind him he heard a grunt, and half turned to see Hrolf Longspear stumble, blood spilling from where a horror’s claws had succeeded in breaking the thigh seal of his armour. Uller Greylock was also injured, his helmet buckled where a screamer’s passing blades had hammered into him. The Grey Knights were on their flanks, wreathed in wyrdflame as they hacked at the sea of madness. It would not be enough.

  It was Hostor who saved them. His Blood Claws, the only one of the three boarding packs to have resisted the curse of the Wulfen, burst onto the command deck from the far side of the melee. Their howls joined with the pounding of bolt pistols and the roaring of chainswords as they speared into the fight around the control platform. Almost immediately Ragnar felt the shuddering press of morphing wyrdflesh around him lessen as the Tzeentch daemons turned to face the new threat.

  ‘Blackpelts, forward!’ he barked, shouldering his way through the fight. The platform’s stairs lay directly ahead, devoid of enemies, the eldritch energies of the silver warp portal coruscating above. Behind him he could hear his Wolf Guard struggling to keep the way clear, a fresh tide of wyrdlings breaking against their blades and armour as the creatures realised the Wolf Lord’s intentions.

  Ragnar parted a final horror with a swing of Frostfang, stamping on the thing’s dissipating remains as he lunged for the stairs. He took the metal rungs three at a time, alone now, his fangs bared. The air ahead shimmered and warped, images repeating themselves, patterns shattering and reforming around the faceless, dark thing that sat beneath the warp portal’s swirling quicksilver centre. Ragnar flung himself at the twisting barrier with a howl.

  And stopped. Silence gripped him, sudden and complete. The frenetic bloodletting of the command deck was gone. Here, in a perfect sphere of unreality centred beneath the portal, all was calm and still.

  The star fort’s command throne lay before him. A figure sat upon it, huge, brooding, clad in baroque power armour and a horn-crested helm. The blue battleplate was trimmed with gold and inscribed with hundreds of leering daemonic heads, the eyes regarding the Wolf Lord with a mocking glint as he stumbled to a halt.

  As Ragnar stopped the figure spoke, voice silky and slick with ten millennia of vile deeds.

  ‘Hello again, Young King,’ said Madox.

  Iron Requiem, in high orbit above Svellgard

  More Wolves.

  The augur arrays of the Iron Hands battle-barge had detected another fleet moving in-system. Their projected course took them to Svellgard, and the section of the crusade fleet surrounding the moon. Data logs showed the ships as belonging to the Wolf Lord Bran Redmaw’s Great Company.

  Terrek scanned the information, noting the class and size of each approaching vessel. With the fleets of three Wolf Lords combined above the moon their voidborne assets would outnumber those of this portion of the crusade fleet. And that was without factoring in the destructive power sitting dormant in the silos buried beneath the craggy tundra of Svellgard’s islands. The Iron Captain cut the link with Sven Bloodhowl – who was still raging impotently at him from the moon’s surface – and opened a channel to Epathus, back aboard the Ultramarines flagship.

  ‘We should petition Grand Master Azrael for reinforcements,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Epathus allowed. ‘But I have just explained the situation to Harald Deathwolf. He is in agreement with our projected assault plan.’

  ‘I do not trust the Wolves,’ Terrek said, his flat machine tone giving the statement no inflection.

  ‘We have little choice other than to seek their assistance, for now. The forces at our disposal are insufficient for purging Svellgard alone.’

  ‘No force need be exerted if we destroy the moon from orbit.’

  ‘Such an act will not be sanctioned by the rest of the crusade, Terrek. It would mean the destruction of the Wolves’ orbital defence systems, and would likely cause catastrophic damage to Frostheim as well.’

  The Iron Hand felt a surge of annoyance throb through his circuitry. He suppressed the unworthy emotion. The Ultramarine’s words had some merit. Regardless of where their loyalties lay, the Space Wolves currently occupied a powerful system-defence nexus. Destroying it would mean destroying valuable Imperial facilities whose ancient, sacred mechanisms ought to be recaptured intact.

  ‘I will transmit a request for reinforcements to the Rock,’ he said. ‘Then we shall begin planetfall, as per the prearranged assault plan.’

  ‘I shall see you on the surface, Iron Captain,’ said Epathus.

  The World Wolf’s Lair, Svellgard

  ‘Machine-loving, cogbrained, traitorous wyrd-scum,’ Sven spat. ‘I hope your servo-loving mother burns in the Seven Hells for the rest of eternity.’

  The vox-link to the Iron Hands battle-barge had been cut over a minute earlier, but that didn’t stop the Wolf Lord’s invectives from echoing around the bunker. Eventually, Harald placed a hand on his fellow jarl’s shoulder.

  ‘What?’ Sven snarled, rounding on him in the confined, red-lit space of the Lair’s secondary command bunker.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to the Ultramarines captain, Epathus,’ the older Wolf Lord said. ‘He’s uploading a planetary assault overview to our systems right now. They’re going to spearhead a counter-attack.’

  ‘Yngfor is dead,’ Sven said. ‘And his pack with him. I’ll kill that Iron Hand traitor myself!’

  ‘Afterwards, Young Wolf,’ Harald said. ‘Right now we have more pressing concerns than vengeance.’

  The thudding of bolter fire from outside
the bunker’s reinforced walls underscored his words. Since the destruction of Infurnace the daemonic assaults had only increased. The outer bastions were hard-pressed and the combat channels were overwhelmed with reports of rising casualty rates and unsustainable ammunition expenditure. The ocean-eating warp rifts were still widening. If left unchecked, Sven knew they would swallow the whole moon, and create a cataclysmic rent in reality that would surely rip apart the entire Fenris System.

  ‘What do the sons of Guilliman want?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘They’ve identified three primary warp portals from orbit. They’ll attack one, the Iron Hands the second and we’ll strike at the third. An orbital bombardment will help seal them and clear us a path.’

  ‘They’re as likely to try to wipe us out as seal the rifts,’ Sven snarled.

  ‘That may be, but at the moment we have no choice but to trust them. As long as we try to hold the daemons, their numbers will only multiply. We have to go on the offensive. Also, Redmaw is on his way.’

  ‘He’s finally arrived in-system?’

  ‘With all his fleet. Now is the time to strike.’

  ‘And afterwards, hold these misguided fools to account for what they’ve done,’ Sven added.

  ‘Aye, that we shall, brother.’

  Wolftide, in high orbit above Midgardia

  The Wolf Lord had returned to the iron-clad bridge of his flagship, boots ringing from the metal underfoot. Kreg bowed, eyes averted. ‘I could not stop him, lord. I tried.’

  Egil didn’t respond. He was looking past the Long Fang, out of the Wolftide’s viewing ports. At the crusade fleet, clustered around the brooding, tower-studded bulk of the Rock. The Iron Wolf’s expression was dark.

  He had returned minutes earlier, retrieved along with his pack by one of his flagship’s Stormwolves. They’d brought Conran’s remains with them, and the Great Wolf’s battered crown.

  ‘Conran tried to reason with the Lions,’ Kreg explained. ‘He believed if he proved there were still Wolves on Midgardia they wouldn’t burn it. He went himself.’

  ‘They know he went?’ Egil asked quietly. ‘They know he was on the surface when they began the bombardment?’

  ‘Yes, lord, he told them. We have the vox transcripts.’

  ‘And they knew I was still planetside as well? That I was hunting for the Great Wolf?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Gunner,’ Egil said to one of his huscarls. ‘You have a lock?’

  ‘We do, lord,’ the huscarl said.

  ‘Conran ordered us to load and lock all batteries before he departed,’ Kreg explained. ‘It was how we convinced the Lions to talk to us in the first place.’

  ‘Hail them again,’ Egil ordered.

  ‘We cannot, lord,’ the vox huscarl said, shaking his head. ‘The entire fleet has sealed us out of its channels.’

  ‘Gunner, what are you locked onto?’ Egil asked.

  ‘An Imperial Navy Lunar-class cruiser, lord. Wrath of Man, part of the 483rd Obscurus battlefleet sub-detachment.’

  ‘Message from bridge command to the forward bombardment cannon,’ Egil said. ‘Maintain current target. Open fire.’

  Ramilies-class star fort, designate Mjalnar

  Ragnar said nothing. Madox laughed, an oily, chilling sound that filled the bubble of unreality occupying the centre of Mjalnar’s command deck.

  ‘You seem surprised, Wolf,’ the Thousand Sons sorcerer said. ‘Is it really so strange that you should find me here, at the heart of all your frustrations?’

  ‘You’re dead,’ Ragnar said, pointing Frostfang’s idling blades at him. ‘I drove the Spear of Russ through your faceplate.’

  ‘A fine strike,’ Madox said, laughing again. ‘I remember it well!’

  ‘This is a trick. An illusion.’

  ‘Existence itself is an illusion. Life is a trick.’

  ‘I’m not here to bandy words with bad memories,’ Ragnar snarled, striding towards the Chaos Space Marine.

  ‘Of course. You’d be in danger of actually learning something if you did.’

  ‘You have nothing to teach me, wyrdling.’

  ‘What about the fate of Midgardia? I could tell you that it burns with fires set by Angels.’

  ‘Be silent.’

  ‘I could tell you the Lion’s son dances on the end of a daemon’s strings. I could tell you the Iron Wolf has turned his guns on the Corpse-Emperor’s warships.’

  Ragnar raised his chainsword, snarling.

  ‘I could tell you he’s coming back,’ Madox said, but Ragnar wasn’t listening. Frostfang fell, a planet burned and died, and darkness took the Young King.

  The Rock, in high orbit above Midgardia

  Azrael sentenced Vox Seneschal Mendaxis to be auto-scourged, when time allowed. The punishment made the Changeling grin privately, for the fate that had already befallen the Supreme Grand Master’s real vox seneschal was far worse.

  The Mendaxis-thing had returned to its communications pit, suitably penitent. Its inexplicable disappearance earlier had infuriated the normally detached Dark Angel. None thought to wonder where Interrogator-Chaplain Elezar had now gone. He was surely in his reclusiam-cell, praying.

  The Changeling was glad of the change of flesh. It provided the perfect opportunity for more distractions.

  ‘The captain of Wrath of Man, lord,’ it called up to Azrael, seated on the Rock’s bridge throne. ‘He’s been fired upon by the Space Wolves battle-barge Wolftide!’

  ‘A warning shot?’ Azrael demanded.

  ‘It struck him amidships, lord. His port shields have taken damage.’

  ‘What of–’

  The Supreme Grand Master’s question went unfinished. Auspex arrays across the Rock’s oculus viewscreens and the ranks of cogitator pews lit up with a storm of warning symbols. Somewhere a claxon began to wail.

  ‘Sire, the entire Space Wolves fleet has just opened fire!’ shouted an Augur Chief. ‘Imperial Navy assets are reporting direct hits!’

  ‘Message to the entire crusade fleet, all ships are to hold fire,’ Azrael snapped. ‘And open a channel with the Wolftide.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ the Mendaxis-thing said. ‘I shall see to it personally.’

  He turned in the bottom of the communications pit and snatched a vox horn.

  ‘Patch this through to crusade fleet elements,’ he ordered the communications serfs hardwired into the stations around him. ‘All ships be advised – they may fire at will.’

  Wrath of Man, in high orbit above Midgardia

  The Wrath of Man rocked like an Old Terran ship in a sea swell, its shields flaring around it with vigorous blue light.

  ‘Another hit, captain!’ shouted Lieutenant Renmann. ‘Port shields reporting thirty-one per cent integrity!’

  ‘I can see that Lieutenant, thank you,’ Captain Krief said through clenched teeth. ‘Kindly reduce your voice to a level befitting that of an officer of His Divine Majesty’s Imperial Navy, and then get me a secure channel with the Rock.’

  The reprimand barely had an effect on his wide-eyed subordinate. The young Third Lieutenant scampered across the bridge to the vox bank, where communications deck officers in pristine white uniforms were scrambling to acknowledge the flood of engagement data coming in from the rest of the fleet.

  ‘Sir, signal from the Rock!’ he shouted, waving a comms chit at the captain. ‘Fleet assets are to engage at will.’

  ‘God-Emperor preserve us all,’ Krief said, leaning against the brass railings of his control platform and staring out of the viewing ports at the Space Wolves fleet. Had it really come to this? Even as he asked himself the question another bombardment cannon strike impacted against the Wrath of Man’s shields. He felt the deck shudder beneath him, and the bridge’s lumen globes blinked dangerously.

  ‘Sir, port shields at nine per cent integrity!’ Renmann squealed.

  ‘Hard to port,’ Krief said heavily. ‘Gunnery, man the forward lances, and prepare torpedo bays one through six
.’

  Wolftide, in high orbit above Midgardia

  ‘Lord, all ships are reporting successful hits,’ said the vox huscarl. The bridge of Egil’s flagship was thick with the backdraught of weapons discharge and the stench of macrocannon propellant.

  ‘Have them cease fire,’ Egil said, eyes scanning the readouts of the bridge’s oculus viewscreens. ‘And check that link with the Rock. Tell me they’ve opened communications.’

  ‘Lord, scanners report incoming fire,’ shouted a frantic kaerl from the augur bay. ‘Lances and torpedoes!’

  ‘No change with the Rock,’ said the vox seneschal. ‘The channel remains closed.’

  ‘May the Deathwolf devour them all,’ Egil snapped. ‘Message to all ships, resume fire. And have all hands brace for impact.’

  The Rock, in high orbit above Midgardia

  ‘Lord, our Imperial Navy assets are returning fire,’ said the Augur Chief.

  ‘What?’ demanded Azrael. His voice carved through the hubbub of the Rock’s bridge. ‘Order them to cease at once. Mendaxis, link to me directly.’

  ‘Of course, sire,’ the Mendaxis-thing said, no longer even bothering to hide its grin from the dead-eyed serfs around it. It coupled the Supreme Grand Master’s throne vox cord to the broadcasting terminal, taking its time about it.

  ‘There appears to be a transmission fault, sire,’ it lied.

  ‘Secondary vox then,’ Azrael snapped to one of the communication sub-pits. ‘Link me!’

  It was all the Changeling could do to stifle a laugh.

  Wrath of Man, in high orbit above Midgardia

  ‘Sir, communication from the Rock!’ shrilled Lieutenant Renmann. ‘All ships are to cease fire immediately!’

  Captain Krief looked up from the damage readout on his control lectern, peering through the organised chaos that dominated the Imperial Navy bridge.

  ‘Clarify,’ he ordered.

  ‘Order clarified,’ Renmann replied after a moment. ‘All ships cease fire!’

  ‘Have the Adeptus Astartes taken leave of their senses?’ First Lieutenant Oppen asked. His words were punctuated by another shuddering impact. Krief’s eyes darted back to the damage readout scrolling across his lectern’s monitor. The shields were on the brink of shorting out. Like the other half-dozen Navy vessels nearest to the Space Wolves fleet, his ship was now fully engaged. To break the firing cycle and power down or even stall the targeting sequences would guarantee defeat, should the Wolves maintain their fire. By the time they were fully operational again, the fearsome armaments at the Space Marines’ disposal would have already transformed them into a listing, burning wreck.